The present invention relates to the forming and shaping of planar, plate shaped components and structure parts, into a curved configuration which can be defined as curvature about 2 different axes and more particularly the invention relates to a method of shaping such objects made of an elastic material which is under certain conditions plastic whereby the shaping is obtained through the deforming impact of ball shaped elements (peening shot) impinging upon the part at a high pressure up to 10 bar. For obtaining the desired shaping and still more particularly the invention relates to components which may have various thicknesses possibly with thickness steps somewhere along the extension.
It is known for quite some time to shape elastic and plastically behaving material and components by curving them around an axis in that e.g. steel balls (peening soft) are accelerated and caused to impinge upon the surface. On impact they produce locally strain and owing to exerted pressure that local tension results in physical extension of the surface layer through local plastic flow. Underneath the surface layer there are strata which owing to the extension produced above will exhibit certain strain will also plastically flow and eliminate elastic tension. The shaping procedure is practiced e.g. in the aerospace industry for making particularly shaped airplane parts. For example, panels, skin parts for the cells in an air plane; that means the coverage of the fuselage and/or the wing are shaped in this manner basically with shaping to obtain by curving the part around a particular axis.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,329,862 e.g. suggests such a method and proposes particularly acceleration of the little balls through impeller wheels or the like. These centrifugal wheels are arranged in a direction transversely to the relative motion between so the parts to be deformed. These parts (blanks) are somehow clamped to or received on a particular table or the like. These particular arrangements do not permit or only in a very rudimentary and incomplete fashioh shaping of planar parts around two different axes. Other state of the art references are e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,668,912 and 4,426,806 and art in similar subclasses as well as the art cited in these patents.